Hazards of the Trail: How to Make Sure You Come Back Alive

Summer hung around a little later than usual last year in Wyoming, and it nearly killed me.

Well, the locals would probably have a good chuckle if they heard me say that, but it sure felt like a near-death experience at the time. And, either way, I think what happened to me in Jackson Hole last September says a lot about the hazards, and the allure, of trail running in scruffy places.

The editors of Running Times agreed, and they’re allowing me to recount my tale of woe here, along with the comments of some seasoned professionals, in hopes that we can all learn something from them. Of course, maybe all we’ll learn is that I’m an idiot. I don’t know. You be the judge.

Blacktail Butte

A butte is a steep-sided hill or small mountain that rises abruptly from flat terrain. If geological features were animals, buttes would be mules—squatter than their showier cousins, and more stubborn somehow, too.

Blacktail Butte, in Jackson Hole, WY, pops out of the valley floor across the road from the mail stop and way station known as Moose. Rising five hundred feet above the surrounding scrub, Blacktail is a big, wrinkly lump of rock and dirt, alternately covered with knee-high amber grass and dense stands of pine that tumble down its notches.

On a very warm September morning last year, the final day of a ten-day family vacation, I decided to run up that lump. Standing in our friends’ guest house near the Snake River, I could see the butte pitched against the azure sky and framed by the kitchen window. Its grassy southern contour marked a stark line, rising steadily but never too steep, that pulled the eye upward. As often happens, with the eye went the desire to run.

Here’s what I thought I knew: A mile and a half would get me to the highway, and then another quarter mile on a fire road would bring me to the foot of the hill, where I’d find a trail to the top, ascend, turn around, and come home. I did not need a map because it was open country with clear landmarks. If the trail became confusing, I could always stop at the forty-five minute mark and retrace my steps.

It was hot, so I would wear my lightest clothes, but that wouldn’t be a problem because I would be running on trails through grass. It was also very dry—Jackson Hole is practically a desert in the summer—but I would not need water because I would only be gone for an hour and a half, at most.

The Best Laid Plans

My route brought me toward the butte from the west, my back to the gloriously vaulting and jagged Tetons. As I neared the two-lane highway that bisects Jackson Hole north to south, I scouted for a trail to the top. None was evident, but the fire road I planned to take appeared to wind around the mound’s southern foot. I figured I would find a path up the other side.

After crossing the highway, I scrambled over a cattle gate onto the fire road. Grasshoppers buzzed and clicked, spurting into the warm air like fat kernels of popcorn as I passed. A herd of bison grazed in the distance. An airplane rose into the rich alpine blue and wheeled overhead.

The fire road rounded the butte and continued along the base on the opposite side. Twenty-five minutes into the run, I found a horse trail that pointed up the hill and turned onto it. Instead of marking a beeline to the top, however, the trail switched back and forth. I passed through a cluster of trees and walked some to keep my heart rate down. I thought a little bit about bears.

About forty minutes into the run, the trail had leveled off, but I was not standing on a ridge looking back at the Tetons as I had expected. Instead, I was passing over lumpy, tree-covered terrain with no clear view of the horizon. The forty-five minute mark arrived—my halfway point by the clock—but I decided to keep going because I figured I had to be close.

Then, in a tangle of pines, the trail disappeared. I continued picking my way through the trees in the same direction, thinking I’d pick the trail back up in a few steps. A grouse exploded into the air from behind a fallen log. I could not find a new path. I decided to turn around and retrace my steps.

Lost in America

Nothing looked familiar. "No problem," I told myself, pushing aside a growing unease. I decided to bushwhack toward the south and east, where I expected to reach the grassy ridge I had seen from the kitchen window that morning. On a hike the day before, my brother and I had easily bushwhacked our way back down from nearby Shadow Mountain, and I was confident I could do the same thing on the butte.

But instead of descending, I found I was going up again, through scrub and trees instead of grass. I crested one granite mound, only to find another rising in front of me, and still no view of the Tetons. I thought about how thirsty I was and decided to focus on making my way west, no matter what, using the sun as a compass.

Soon, I came to the top of a rock wall at the head of a steep notch and decided to pick my way down. I had long since forgotten about getting in my run—I just wanted to figure out where I was and get home. In the notch, the trees and underbrush soon became so thick that my legs were getting badly scratched with every step. After a few more steps I couldn’t go any farther. I turned around. From the bottom, the rock wall seemed too steep to climb. I could not see a way out.

Panic

For about a minute, I freaked out. Dehydration was my biggest concern. I had been running and scrambling for more than an hour on a hot day in parched air, and I had no idea how long it might be before I reached water, if I reached water. I was genuinely concerned that I would get heat exhaustion before I got safe.

Rummaging through some old Boy Scout wisdom, I told myself a few times to remain calm, and began scratching my way over to the least steep side of the notch. There, I soon hit on a horse trail with fresh hoof prints. It pointed down the hill, and I followed.

A few minutes later, I heard voices—rock climbers on the granite face visible from the highway near the butte’s northern tip. I knew where I was. I had gotten lucky.

The trail spilled out of the notch, and I could see the Tetons. I waded through the sagebrush onto the road and started what turned out to be a three-mile shuffle back to the cabin.

As soon as I got inside, I chugged water and started eating pretzels while staring through the kitchen window at the mound of rock and dirt. And trees. This time, I noticed the trees.

More Tales of the Trail

"You really have to think about all the little things that could go wrong, because a bunch of them can add up to do you in."

That bit of wisdom comes from Scott Gordon, who lives and trains in New Mexico and finished seventh in the 1999 edition of the Hardrock 100, one of the toughest ultramarathons in the world. I spoke to Scott and several other accomplished trail runners in January, hoping to find a little commiseration and to assemble a list of rules I could run through my head the next time I was tempted to scamper through the woods in unfamiliar country.

Along with advice, I heard a couple of good stories. Scott told me about a Grand Canyon "rim-to-rim-to-rim" run he completed with training buddy Eric Clifton on a day when the thermometer on the ranger’s shed read 120 degrees. Scott dislocated a finger in an early fall, but as it happened, that was no big deal. The trouble came as he started the day’s final ascent up the North Kaibab Trail from Phantom Ranch.

"I had plenty of water," he said. "That wasn’t the problem. The thing that did me in was my failure to think about electrolytes. I was sweating out all my minerals and wasn’t replacing them. I started having seizures, sort of a palsy thing."

That’s a problem on a trail that winds up the side of a cliff. "If I can’t control my muscles, I can’t stay on this trail," he recalled thinking. "It was sort of creepy for a while there."

Yeah.

I heard about trouble in the opposite kind of weather from Dave Dunham, who was named USA Mountain Runner of the Year by USA Track & Field in 2000. On New Year’s Day this year, Dave and a friend hit the Wilderness Trail outside Loon, NH, where Dunham lives.

"There was a fair amount of snow on the ground, and we ran it in running shoes," he said. "My running partner went to cross one of the streams and jumped and went completely in. He was pretty soaked and I was pretty soaked. My thinking at that time was, ‘Keep moving or we’re gonna be in trouble.’ It could have been dangerous."

Me again: Could have been?

Cavalier Common Sense

Words like "rules" and "safe" seem to make hardcore trail runners squirm in their seats. If you find yourself asking advice from one of these people, try using words like "tips" and "careful" instead.

When I referred to my Wyoming experience in an email as a "misadventure," Roch Horton, who finished twelfth in the 2001 edition of something called the Mountain Masochist Trail Race, shot back a friendly correction.

"Yep, I have many stories myself," he wrote. "However, I consider them adventures, not misadventures. A misadventure is that beautiful woman leading you on for months and then ditching you for another guy on that ski vacation. Getting lost, benighted, chased by lightning, running out of food, blistering, hypothermia, severe chafing, diarrhea—now that’s adventure!"

These guys are not irresponsible, however. Quite the opposite; the ethos of trail running, I gathered from my conversations with Roch and his ilk, involves knowing the risks involved and preparing thoroughly against them. The phrase "common sense" crops up a lot.

Perhaps the most essential preparation that everybody mentioned was the one I most regretted ignoring on my trip up and down Blacktail Butte: always carry fluids. "It doesn’t matter what the weather is, that’s always important," Dave Dunham said. And it certainly seems to matter more in hot, dry places.

For longer trips into the back country, Craig Holloway of Patagonia’s Alpine Team advises runners to carry energy bars, a first-aid kit, a cell phone, and identification. Sitting in my suburban home office, that sounds like overkill, but when I put myself back up on Blacktail Butte, I can see where he’s coming from. With food, water and a phone, I could have taken my time finding a safe route back.

Maps came up a lot, too. "Know the area," Dunham advised. "If you know someone who knows it and can run with them, even better."

Yes, that would have been a good idea.

The other note they all sounded was being prepared in case something does go wrong—knowing what to do or where to go to find help. "Have an out," Dunham said, or as Gordon put it, "Plan an escape. Know how you can get back."

Oops.

The Explorer Spirit

Still, the spirit of trail running is not in the precautions you take, it’s in what those precautions enable you to do. Most of us don’t get a lot of opportunities to explore our physical world anymore, to go places where furry creatures and the weather take over our consciousness. The presence of risk is part of what makes it interesting.

When I asked Scott Gordon if there was anything we hadn’t talked about that was on his mind, he had this to say. "I don’t want to tell anybody ‘Run within your range,’ because then you’re not pushing the envelope. I think it's important to go out there and explore and test. That’s where the fun is. There’s nothing about being careful that says you have to be inhibited."